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Environmental law is a body of law—a system of complex and interlocking statutes, common law, treaties, conventions, regulations, and policies—that seeks to moderate or eliminate the actual or projected harm to the natural environment resulting from human activities. Environmental law as a distinct system arose in the 1960s in the major industrial economies as it was becoming clear that the cumulative negative environmental effects of human activities were becoming unsustainable in the long term. This new field of law has often been hampered by a lack both of institutions and of a common public will supporting enforcement of the laws.

Environmental law rests on the recognition of a new relation of humans with the environment, a relation in which humans explicitly value the biosphere, no longer assuming that the environment's natural capital can be either freely consumed or freely used for the dumping of wastes. The emergence of environmental law in the twentieth century marks a fundamental shift in human consciousness toward the recognition ultimately that humanity is one family bound together on one planet and jointly responsible to use the environment without destroying it. With many people still committed to their right to freely exploit the environment to their own needs without regard for larger, cumulative effects, environmental law and the institutions supporting its enforcement are still under development.

Environmental laws may aim to regulate policy locally, statewide (or in the province), nationally, or internationally. International environmental law. is a subset of environmental law and refers to the body of international law that concerns the protection of the global environment.

Environmental law is one of several methods of protecting the environment. Other avenues include environmental education. the use of economic incentives (ecotourism, debt exchange for conservation), and a paradigm shift in the way businesses value and optimize the use of the full spectrum of environmental resources, including air, water, and land. Utilizing humanity's religious traditions and spiritual dimension offers another avenue for advancing environmental protection, as people can be encouraged to be stewards of creation even when there is no law or no one is watching.

As with each method of protecting the environment, the use of environmental law has its shortcomings. For one, laws and regulations can lack effectiveness due to the difficulty of law enforcement. For example, the Pantanal —an immense wetland located in South America —is protected by many environmental regulations; however, there often is poor enforcement of those regulations given the region's remoteness and vast size. In addition, environmental laws and regulations are often enacted subsequent to undesirable consequences that have already occurred. Many environmental regulations have been enacted worldwide to protect wetlands; however, this comes after about 50 percent of the world's wetlands have already been destroyed.

Environmental law has been criticized for restricting the rights of private property and even contravening national sovereignty; implicit in such laws is the view that protecting the environment is a public responsibility to which lesser private and national interests must bend. The interdependence of all creatures (including humans) in the web of life requires an ethic of "shared ownership," linking private rights with public responsibility to the environment; and by the same token, linking the sovereignty of nations with the greater responsibility to protect the planet Earth.

Environmental law involves regulating human behavior toward the environment by passing various laws and regulations or via international agreements. For example, hunting with nets is prohibited in some environments, such as the Pantanal wetland, because it could devastate the fish stocks and also result in the indiscriminate taking of the wrong species. Cutting forests down to the riverbank is often proscribed because it would result in erosion. Internationally, there are laws regulating whaling and prohibiting trade in endangered species .

When attempting to understand the boundaries of environmental law one finds no clear limit. Environmental law tends to be interdisciplinary and includes fields such as economics, political science, ecology. human rights, and so forth. Among the issues that it deals with are sustainable development, biodiversity, pollution, and endangered species.

International environmental law changed greatly with the Stockholm Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Environment in 1972. (See Report of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment .) This conference led to new thinking on how to reduce damages and better preserve the environment through law.

International environmental lawyers often receive specialized training in the form of an LL.M. degree after having a first law degree—often in another country from where they got their first law degree. Notable programs include the LL.M. in Environmental Law Program at the University of Oregon and the Stetson University College of Law Environmental Moot Court .

Some of the major topics cited by the American Society for Environmental Law that have been addressed by international conventions in recent decades include: